32 n MACHINE-BUILDING October 2025 www.drivesncontrols.com Machine-builder skills crisis is affecting both sides of the Atlantic Asurvey of more than 300 machine-builders in Europe and North America has revealed a widespread skills shortage with 79% of the respondents reporting that the issue is having a significant, or very significant, impact on their operations. The survey was conducted for Eaton by S&P Global Market Intelligence 451 Research.It has published a report based on the findings that examines the extent of the skills gap and its implications for the machine-building sector, as well as suggesting some possible mitigating measures. The report – called The impact of the labour shortage on machine-builders – says that machine-builders on both sides of the Atlantic face “unprecedented challenges” as they are having to cope with a growing demand for increasingly complex industrial machinery, at the same time as the pool of skilled machine-building workers is shrinking. The survey data was drawn from 300 machine-building experts in the US, Canada, Germany, Italy and the Netherlands. They were involved in a variety of sectors including electrical equipment; HVAC systems; material-handling; food and beverage; agricultural equipment; and pumps and compressors. Widespread vacancies The survey found that a third of machinebuilding companies have up to 25% of their job positions unfilled. And around 40% reckon that the skills shortage has cut their productivity by 11–25%. Skills shortages are also affecting the machine-builders’ customers. The report suggests that several factors that are contributing to the skills shortages, including: Industry 4.0 needs for higher skill levels; “baby boomers” (those born from 1946-1964) retiring in large numbers; and a shift in how people work and what they value in a job. The reports suggests that moving to high-performance machines could reduce users’ machine management and maintenance requirements, easing the impact of the skills shortages and cutting their running costs. New business models, such as offering products as a service, may hold some of the answers for machine-builders and their customers, while increasing budgets for training and upskilling may also be part of the solution. The report says that designing and building easy-to-use, high-performance machines to replace ageing technologies and labour-intensive work processes will help the industry to move forward. “The machine-builders that can overcome the ongoing skills-gap-based challenges will be better positioned competitively in the long term,” suggests David Immerman, consulting analyst at S&P Global Market Intelligence 451 Research. “This report is a wake-up call, showing how the labour shortage is one of the biggest challenges facing the machinebuilding industry in both North America and Europe,” adds Simone Gardosi, who leads Eaton’s machine-building segment in the EMEA region. “It is a global problem that requires the global solutions we are able to provide for our machine-building customers.” “Machine-builders are directly affected by skills shortages, but they also hold the key to helping their customers overcome the adverse effects of the labour crunch,” says Molly Jenks, Eaton’s vice-president of segments for North American sales. “We can help them to design and build easy-touse and high-performing machines for their customers, as well as increase their speed in delivering new machines to market.” n Machine-builders in Europe and North America are reporting high levels of unfilled vacancies. Some are hoping that new technologies could help to bridge the skills gap. The percentage of machine-builders surveyed (left axis) and the proportion of positions they are reporting as being unfilled (yellow graph, bottom axis) as well as their estimate of how much the skills gap is reducing their productivity (blue line, bottom axis). Source: 451 Research
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